The Economic Side

By Lindy Lady, CPC, CPCO

KMA Medical Business Advocacy Manager

KMA and the Kentucky Foundation for Medical Care recently launched “Commit to Quit,” a statewide smoking cessation program that helps smokers in Kentucky stop smoking with guidance from their physician.

Physicians may be reimbursed for helping Medicare, Medicaid and privately insured patients quit smoking.

Have any of your patients had problems obtaining smoking cessation drugs paid for by an insurer? When smoking cessation counseling is provided have you received appropriate payment from the insurer? KMA wants to know. Contact KMA Medical Business Advocacy Manager Lindy Lady, CPC, CPCO, at lady@kyma.org to report reimbursement issues with smoking cessation or, if you need coding assistance, visit the KMA website at www.kyma.org and view the Commit to Quit Job Aid on smoking cessation coding.

ICD-10 Coding for Tobacco Use/Abuse/Dependence

ICD-9 offered two tobacco-use diagnosis codes. In ICD-10, nicotine dependence (Category F17) has 20 codes that are broken up to identify the specific tobacco product used – unspecified, cigarettes, chewing tobacco and other tobacco products.
For example:

• Category F17.20 is used to identify unspecified nicotine dependence
• Category F17.21 is used to identify nicotine dependence with cigarettes
• Category F17.22 is used to identify nicotine dependence with chewing tobacco
• Category F17.29 is used to identify nicotine dependence with other tobacco products.

Example – Category F17.20 Nicotine Dependence, unspecified